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1. But in Europe, this is a very different kettle of fish and it would be really false to believe that all countries are alike or that credit cards are ubiquitous regardless of the culture. As a matter of fact, when it comes to modes of payments across Europe, habits have been traditionally very different from a long long time depending on the countries. In Germany and Switzerland for instance cash is very much used, also in the UK. Cash is not so usual in France, but cheques are still very popular there, as they are in the US. Germany, Austria, Belgium and also UK to a lesser extent are also very familiar with the Girobank system which enables a bank user to credit another bank user or a merchant directly through diary transfer, using a form. As a matter of fact in Germany and Austria mainly cheques have practically never been heard of for the past 15 years. All this has major repercussions on the way that people behave on the Internet when they want to buy from merchants online. This is exactly what can be observed in the above chart: whereas Great Britain for instance is very strong on credit card usage on the Internet (90% usage) Germany is still very intent on using direct debit online (64%) whereas Spain is more diverse but credit card is still the most important mode of payments on the Internet by far. The UK also has more diverse types of credit card systems and for instance Germany or Spain and MasterCard and Visa are the only two most payments plastic. In Japan for instance, we would have found JCB as a major credit card supplier.
2. Worthy of note too is the fact that e-commerce is still not up to speed in all European countries. These various degrees of maturity will also have a serious impact on for the mode of payments used online.